


Sera Was Always

by ShepardCommander



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 10:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7841779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShepardCommander/pseuds/ShepardCommander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Telyn Lavellan has reached the end. Solas is gone, having taken her armor and the Anchor with it, revealing her entire time as the Inquisitor nothing but a lie. Broken, Telyn struggles to find the strength to go on. But when her rage fails her, what-or who-is left? Trespasser DLC spoilers! F!Lavellan/Sera, NOT Solas/f!Lavellan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sera Was Always

**Author's Note:**

> Just a head's up! I actually really like Solas. Telyn...not so much after the events of Trespasser. Her views do NOT reflect my own. Just wanted to make that clear! Depending on how I feel, I might make a collection of f!Lavellan/Sera shorts entitled, “Of Bees, Bows, and Staves”. I feel like Sera doesn't get enough, especially with f!Lavellan.

Rage.

Rage was all she had left.

Telyn stumbled through the Elven Ruins, the ruined path that lay before her more treacherous than it had been before as she slipped between one realm and the next, between consciousness and unconsciousness. Or was it between death and life? She couldn't tell.

One moment, fallen comrades and past enemies lined her way, bloodied and bruised, broken and decaying, faces either filled with vengeance or mistrust, sometimes both. _Why couldn't you save me?_ those friendly to her seemed to ask, their purple, rotting faces with dull, hopeless eyes peering out at her between strands of flat, grease-matted hair. _Come with me beyond the Veil!_ those she had felled invited with outstretched hands with swollen, hole-filled digits.

The next breath and she was alone, her demons back where they belonged—inside, festering in the darkest parts of what remained of her heart.

She moved forward through some innate desire of self-preservation alone, what was and wasn't real becoming increasingly difficult to tell apart. Every step, every labored rise and fall of her chest, sent agony ripping through her; she could feel every placement—aligned or misaligned—of bone, where the nerves ran, flesh began, where they—bone, nerve, flesh— _should_ be but no longer were.

 _It's still there—it's still there—it's still there_ , her body seemed to say, even though her mind told her that it—her left arm—was gone, that it had been devoured by magic, inch by blighted inch, the Anchor turning against her and eating away at the hand that had housed its might. The limb throbbed something fierce, and she could hear Corypheus laughing at her, the stupid mortal that had thought she could claim the power of the Fade itself.

Water stampeded over the stony lip of the hill that had led her to this fate, her feet slipping and gaining traction over and over again on the winding, moss-covered path that lay imbedded in the earth. She could not hear the water's fall, nor feel the spray of the cool mist upon her pale skin, the delicate and intricate branches etched upon her face standing out more than ever, as she passed the fall by, for there was a thunderous roar in her ears that was not of nature's doing, a rush of blood and vengeance and fury.

The sun's beams darted in and out amongst the trees shading her way as clouds drifted overhead, but pay them heed she did not. The way forward she could hardly see in between the splotches of black splattered across her vision, what wasn't covered by an inky blotch haunted by the image of _him_ that seemed to be permanently burned onto her retina. _He_ remained even when the other ghouls had gone, _he_ was her future, her past, her present. Every action she had taken had been calculated, according to _his_ plan, as would everything she would do from then on out because _he_ was a blighted God and she a mere mortal.

And she had foolishly trusted _him_.

Solas.

Anger—hot, fiery, volcanic, consuming—burned in Telyn's chest and her hands— _hand—_ shook as misplaced adrenaline coursed through her veins. Sweat broke out along her spine, only to be instantly evaporated by the heat of inferno magics building inside her. Cloth began to singe and metal to warp, but Telyn herself remained unscathed by the energy running rampant underneath her skin.

She wanted to burn this place, this peaceful, silent place to the ground for naught but the reason that _he_ had tread upon it.

Her breath caught as she misjudged a step, and suddenly she was back before _him_ , helpless. Helpless as she fell to the ground before him, as if begging, though she would rather die than beg him for help of any sort. Helpless as he grabbed her roughly, her hatred mirrored in his eyes as he held up her cursed hand, both of them knowing that he could end it, end _her_ , but he was choosing not to because he could and she could not and she was helpless, helpless, helpless.

Helpless as a babe, a child, when she had been chosen to be kept in the Lavellan clan and her best friend thrown to the wolves because she was a mage, he was a mage, and there were too many mages and one of them had to go and because she had potential, _potential_ , it had been her to stay and not him.

She was falling, her arms— _arm—_ flung out to catch her, fallen leaves, water-kissed dirt, and luscious green grass rushing up to meet her. Green—emerald, pale clover, sunlight white—the color the Anchor had burned and bruised.

Pain blazed through her, momentarily wiping away the drips of night, as she came to an abrupt stop against stone and mud. Her right hand screamed as sticks and stones stuck into it, the torn trousers beneath her mage robes ripping open further and scrapping pale skin against cracked granite.

A half-strangled scream tore itself from her raw throat, a scream of pain, of anger and she let herself remain there as red blotted out the sky, as she trembled and quaked with such viciousness that she thought her very being would combust and she would be naught but a pile of black ash.

Solas.

Never considered a friend, but an ally, an ally that she had trusted. An ally that had disappeared without a word. An ally that had been _spying_ on her, an ally that had been _lying_ through his damned teeth, and she was going to kill him for it, for spying, lying, betraying.

Rage.

Rage was all she had left.

And yet…

The red subsided, the quivering stopped, and the strength left her, drained away. Dizziness overtook her, and the sky and earth danced into each other in one glorious blur of colors.

This was the end.

Her rage had gotten her this far, and this was as far as she would go. For all her tactics and self-serving methods, careful consideration of every situation, she had ended up here, alone. It wasn't the aloneness that bothered her, but rather that she was _there_ at all. And she was going to die.

She relaxed, felt her body stretch out as sweet numbness washed over. Her mind was hazy, her toes tingled.

There was no point. To anything. To getting up. To fighting another day. She had been fighting since the moment she'd left her mother's womb, in a world predisposed to hate her. And it, the only real thing she'd ever done in her life, was a lie.

A laugh escaped her.

Inquisitor!

That's what she had been, what she'd _thought_ she'd been. An elf, a mage, a woman. Inquisitor!

The ghosts were closing in upon her, brushing against her cheek, stroking her hair. _Come with us_ , they said. _It is time to rest._

Telyn breathed out, intent on giving up, on giving over—she _was_ tired—but there was something that wouldn't let her, a single thread that still bound to her this plane. What it was, she couldn't remember, but surely whatever it was wouldn't mind if she—

“ _Wifey!_ ”

Straw-colored hair.

“Honey Tongue!”

A crooked smile.

“Teetness!”

Freckles.

“Inky!”

A bow and arrow and bees.

“Inquisitor!”

A hat stuffed with apples, a journal of things found and lost, cookies and roofs.

“ _Telyn!_ ”

“Sera.”

Her lover's name escaped her cracked lips in a whispered prayer.

Sera.

And so she got up—up, up,up—something damp smearing across her chest, matting into her pale blonde hair, soaking through her clothes, plastering against her skin.

“Telyn! Where are you?”

Sera.

“Don't leave me! You swore you wouldn't—swore! Pinky promise! You can't go back on that! You can't! You can't!”

The pinky of her remaining hand tingled from where it had hooked with Sera's.

“Pinky promise!”

Telyn pushed herself forward, a new sort of fire burning in her chest, this one born not out of fear or vengeance, but a stronger emotion, the strongest one of all, one that she had thought she had forgotten long ago how to feel.

“Telyn!”

Sera.

Sera was all she had left.

Sera was always what she'd had.

And she was going to crawl, limp, and drag herself through the Fade if it meant they could be together, because that crazy rogue had showed her that life was worth living, taught her the pleasure of the small things, that time could stop when two became one.

“Telyn!”

The fire inside her began to burn away the ghosts and the ghouls.

“Telyn!”

Sera was why she had to get up, why she had beat Solas at his own game. Because in his world, his future, people like Sera wouldn't exist, Sera wouldn't exist.

Her fingers brushed against something magical, the hair on her arms standing on end, there was a slight pull and then she was falling, falling, falling.

“Wifey!”

Three sets of arms wound around her, the familiar scent of mud and powder clinging to the clothes of the body pressed the tightest against hers, and she stopped falling.

“Idiot! Stupid, frigging, stupid, stupid chicken neck shit! Thought I'd lost you, I did!”

Telyn smiled—a real smile, the first she'd had in ages—as she sunk into the archer's lap, guided there by Cassandra and Vivienne, eyelids drooping shut. She was home.

“I pinky promised, didn't I?”


End file.
